MULTUM IN PARVO.

Otago Witness, Issue 2556, 11 March 1903, Page 56

MULTUM IN PARVO.

— Rickmansworth Urban Council recently took tea in- a sewerage tank constructed at the pumping station, 24ft below the level of the river. 1 — Payment of an account rendered 28 years ago was recently made to a Ryde "tradesman 17 years after his retirement from business.

— The biggest wheat&eld in the world is in the Argentine. It belongs to an Italian named Guazone, and covers juet over a bun.dred equare miles. 4i»%^5» o-^*- 1 \ — The highest meteorological station in *he world is that on Pike's Peak, Colorado, /United States, • which is situated at an altitude'of 14,13«t. I' — Doctors' coachmen in Berlin wear white lats." This is to- enable the -public to promptly recognise a physician's vehicle in .case his services are suddenly required. > — A horse with 19ft of tail and a mane 12ft -long 'has arrived in England from {America for .exhibition purposes. Before (Crossing tho Atlantio the animal's life was insured for £10,000. , • I — The director of the publio aquarium afc INew'York has established a hospital for tick fish. The most frequent fish trouble is fungus on the head or tail, shown by a red spot. Fish suffering thus are taken to' ja special pool of disinfected water and .operated on with scissors. 1 — Swiss cowbells have* been introduced Snto the Himalayas as a protection for tattle against tigers. The tigers are said to run as soon as they hear the bells. 1 — When a .Russian, family moves, it 'is tasual for the head to carry about half .a jpint of embers or warm ashes in a closed .vessel from the hearth of one house to that .of the other. * — In a Berlin insane a6ylum is a patient, St is' said, whose hair changes colour with fcer temperature. When she is cool and '.quiet her hair *s a light yellow, but when •he is restless and excited' it becomes auburn. \ m — The drutne used by .the Scot* Guards in South Africa have just been sold, and in some jcasee they fetched between £60 and i£7o apiece, a price which is nearly eight )tjmes as much as they originally cost, i — Mr Simon, addressing the Hundred ~ ffear Club in New York, cited figures furnished by the United States Census Bureau 3435 centenarians, including 86 or of 120, years old and 15 upwards of 230. ' The oldest white American is 120, and jthere,are an Indian of 150. and- a negro of u.45'. ' The oldest woman.- is a negress, aged J|37. • —In the Turin journals recently appeared announcement that a large banquet would iBoori" be given at which the only guests Jwould be those husbands in Turin who did toot .live happily with their wives. The (banquet, in a word, is to be a sort of conisolation feast, and the utmost care wilL be itaken that while it is in progress the un'iortunate spouses shall not be interrupted !by their wives. •— A paper very suitable for love-letters lias been invented in France. It is treated /with a weak solution of sulphuric acid, which Vlestroys not only the writing, but the paper iitself at the end of a certain period longer or [shorter, according to the strength of acid !<used. - Plaintiffs in breach of promise cases tnay be put to great disappointment through *his paper, unless they keep certified copies Jof their lovers' letters. 0 — Professor Reitter has introduced to the for Internal Medicine, in Vienna, k woman with a musical heart. For the past £our year 3 she has suffered from palpitation, about 18 months ago she noticed for the •firat time a peculiar singing noise in her ■breast, which waa also audible to other '/persons, and rose -and fell in strength and gritch. The sound is said to be due to a pialformation of the heart-valves, which seta •Kip vibration. — The largest apple orchard in the world is in the Ozark Mountains, near Lebanon, {Missouri. It comprises 2300 acres of ground, t end is planted with 60 trees to an acre. After Isix years of waiting this huge apple garden has come into full bearing, and is sending "out a crop that, it is claimed, surpasses in "*ize, quantity, and quality any other crop inf the fruit ever grown in the United States. Its value is estimated at over 1,000,000d01. V —An editor in Tennessee recently came to "grief in consequence of* a scheme which he ..employed to boom the circulation of his paper. Ho offered xb a premium for new subscribers a copy of the Bible or a quart 'of whisky, with the idea of pleasing both the ■heep-and the goats in the parwh. There eras no objection to his use of the Bible, but. he was quickly arrested for dealing in i&uor without A license./

—In India, China, Japan, and adjacent countries there are about 400,000,000 people who rarely eat meat; yet they are strong, active, and long-lived. Darwin is the authority ' for the statement that the Andean natives j perform twice the work of ordinary I labourers, and subsist almost entirely on a diet of bananas. bif — It is extraordinary how words for the ! same thing differ in even so small a country !as ours. Take "left-handed," for example. In Gloucestershire such a person is described as "scrammy" ; in Staffordshire he becomes "caggy" ; the phrase for a left-handed I Yorkshireman is "gawkrodger" &r "callicfchanded," and in the next county, Durham, he is "cuddy-paw." j — The newest invention is a hat which : ealutes ladies automatically. By means of clockwork the poor man who is too fatigued to raiee, his hat to a lady friend is able to escape any imputation of impoliteness. Ho has simply slightly to incline his head and the hat raises itself gracefully. On his head resuming tfie perpendicular the hat goes back to its proper position. Of course, the owner has to wind up the hat every night like a watch. j — Out of every- sovereign received by 1 the Church Missionary Society Is goes for ' expenses of administration, Is l|d for collection of funds, Is o£d for preparation of missionaries and for pensions, and the remainder, 163 9-id, goes directly for work in the mission field. Of this 16s 9£d in the pound, 7s is spent on India, 2s 4d goes to East and West Africa, Is 8d to China, Egypt and Palestine take Is sd, Japan 3s, and other centres in Persia, Ceylon, New Zealand, and Canada absorb the remainder. 3^ — Sir Humphry Davy put a wire-gauze envelope around the miner's lamp, and thus removed the greatest danger of fire-damp explosions. Professor Artemieff, of the Kief University, Russia, has devieed a suit of clothes, likewise" made of wire gauze, which will protect the wearer from electric shocks of every kind. Wearing such a suit he received a shock from a condenser charged to 150,000 volts, and attracted sparks more than a yard long with his hands, without burning himself in the least. —No railway company buys a horse after it is seven years old. The Midland has 1350 horses, the Great Northern 1300, the Great Western 1100, the South-western 550, the Soutb-eastem 275, and the London-Brighton 225. The London and North-western has only 650 horses, but Messrs Pipkford and Co., who do most of the North-w'eetern business, have 4000 horses. Carter, Paterson's have 2000. Tho majority of London railway horses work 70 hours a week. As a rule the London railway horse is bought at £60 and is sold at £10 or £12.

— Some curious and interesting experiments are ehortly to be made by the Russian railway officials with non-inflammable railway- carriages on the Russian frontier. The carriages to bo -used in this^ experiment have been constructed in Prussia, and will be formed into a special train, which will be seton fire when leaving Eydtkuhnen, if this be possible. On the arrival of the train at another station the carriages will be opened and the results of the experiment made known to a commission consisting of Russian and German railway officials. — Another success for municipal enterprise ie announced by the London County Council. This comes in the shape of profit from providing boats on the lake* in the parks. The expenses thus incurred in Finsbury Park 6ince April, including wages, amount to only £200, as compared with £738 paid by the public for the use of the boats. In "Victoria Park £311 hae been spent and £1029 received ; and in Battersea Park, where the boats only appeared in July, a clear profit of £250 has resulted. The boats are charged for at the rate of 6d an hour._ — The servant problem is different in Hungary from what it is here. Apparently servants are so plentiful that the Prefect of Jaszbereny, a Hungarian town, has dared to issue the following decree: — "In view of the fact that domestic servants are petting more and more in the habit of neglecting their work in order to amuse themselves, I hereby give notice that any female domestic servant who is found out of doors, or even on the doorstep of the house in which she is employed, after 9 p.m. will be summarily arrested and punished by a fine or four days' imprisonment."

The firebell at Masterfcon is to be run by water power.

The time for the acceptance- of tenders for the supply and delivery of 10 locomotives to the New Zealand Railway Department h&a been extended until June 1.